So my apple is different from your apple, even if they have the same essence. This difference is their existence. That something is that it exists is normally different from what it is.
Even though my apple and your apple are the same thing because they are both apples, they are different things because they have different existences. I can destroy my apple, and yours remains unharmed. The existence of my apple is not a feature of my apple. The existence of my apple just is my apple existing right now. The previous problem with universals can now be resolved. The redness of a painting and a box are the same because they have the same essence.
The redness of the painting is different from the redness of the box because each one has a different existence. What is true of redness is true of all universals, and all named things. Anything that is named, is unique as a particular because its existence is unique. It is the same universal because each instance of that universal has the same essence as any other instance.
The previous problem with particulars can also be resolved. There is no feature or history that makes one particular unique. So Stephen is not unique because he has a particular history, has a unique genetic code or because of any other feature. If he were to have an identical twin, then each one would have a different existence. That is the only thing that is different from every other thing that no other thing could ever share with him.
Since the previous problems with particulars and universals are solved, it is natural for further problems to arise. Question like whether or not every instance of essence has existence and vice versa crops up in discussing these two terms.
The views of idealism and existentialism will play a very a great role here. In the conceptualization of the idealist school of thought, prominently championed by Berkeley, a being exists only in relation to a perceiving mind. So, for them existence is only in the mind of an essential being and does not have an independence of its own. Berkeley, for instance, had held that existence is only real to the extent that it can be perceived by the human mind and nothing else exists if it cannot be perceived as such.
Existence, for Berkeley, is a product of perception of the human mind. The conclusion for the idealist is that essence precedes existence. For the existentialist, this approach is not only contra humanes against humans but also has a tendency to render man and destiny a pre-determined being who has no answer to his absurdities. Existence for the existentialist precedes essence. The paper seeks to juxtapose the positions of theistic philosophers and atheistic existentialists as it were using the standpoint of Berkeley and Sartre as basis and eventually posits that the question of precedence between essence and existence is mere duplicity of terms and playing on words, as neither precedes the other.
Essence and existence are two words that cannot be separated, and a being realizes both its essence and existence only in conceiving them. In other words, essence and existence are not two sides of a coin but properties that cannot just but be in any being, whether animate or inanimate, artificially manufactured or divinely created, other-made or self-made.
Voyage of Discovery: An Introduction to Philosophy. Existentialism and Humanism , Mairet, P. London: Methuen and Co Ltd,. Chapter 9: James Alabi Author. Add to cart. On the traditional understanding of essence and existence The concepts of essence and existence predate contemporary philosophical discourses.
Sign in to write a comment. Read the ebook. To be sure, in Shifa' he points out the the term wujud existence has several meanings: 1 haqiqa the essence, reality of something, the fact that it exists , and 2 the particular existence of something, and by making these distinctions, he confirms his awareness of the various senses of 'existence', but even in view of these different senses of 'existence', there is still no term in his Arabic works which could render hasti adequately.
Ibn Sina, however, holds 'being' in the sense of basti to be the most determinable concept. In view of the preceding discussion in this chapter, it is evident that ibn Sina's doctrine disagrees with that of these Greek philosophers, for he asserts that nothing is above being, and whatever exists is a determination of being. IV, ch. Aristotle's position becomes clear in subsequent sections of the Metaphysica when he indicates that mathematics 'cuts off ' a part of being, whereas metaphysics investigates being as being, ignoring those elements of being which are related to it in an accidental manner i.
For a detailed account of this topic, see J. For essential being, if it is truly distinguished from existence, adds nothing real to the essence itself, but only differs from it in the way it is conceived or signified. Hence, just as the essence of a creature as such, in virtue of its concept, does not say that it would be something actually real with being outside its causes, so the essential being as by standing precisely in this, does not express an actual being by which an essence outside it causes would be constituted in act.
For if to be actual in this latter way is not of the essence of the creature, neither will it be able to pertain to its essential being. Hence, being of a creature as such will prescind of itself from actual being outside its causes by which a created thing comes to be beyond nothing, by which name we designate actual existential being.
But subsistential being is also more contracted than existential being, for the latter is common to substance and accidents. The former is proper to substance. Besides, subsistential being as I suppose from what is to be proved below is something distinct from the existential being of a substantial created nature and separable from it, because it does not constitute a nature in the order of actual entity, which pertains to existence. Now the being of truth in a pro position of itself is not a real and intrinsic being, but it is an objective being in the intellect as it is composing; hence it belongs also to privations.
For we say, accordingly: Blindness is or A man is blind, as Aristotle discusses at greater length in book 5 of Metaphysics, chapter seven. Hence, the discussion is about created existence concerning which, furthermore, we suppose that it is something real and intrinsic to an existing thing; this seems self-evident. For through existence a thing is understood to be something in the nature of things. Therefore, it is necessary that existence be both something real and intrinsic, that is, within the existing thing itself.
For a thing cannot be existing by some extrinsic denomination or some being ens of reason. Other wise, how would existence constitute a real being ens in act and beyond nothing?
Now this statement is proved in a variety of ways. First, because this being, understood precisely, is sufficient for the truth of this statement with a second adjacent: essence is. Hence, that being is true existence. The consequence is clear, for according to the common meaning and human conception, the is of a second adjacent, is not divorced from time. But it signifies being in act in the realm of things, which all of us understand by the name existence or by existential being.
You will say that the is is always said truly of an actual essence, yet not formally because of the actuality of an essence, nor on account of that being by which it is formally constituted in such actuality, but because it never has this being without existence, although distinct from such an essential being or actuality.
But against this retort the antecedent of the argument given is proved. For, by this actual essential being, taken formally and precisely, such an essence is a being ens in act and distinguished from a being ens in potency. Hence, by virtue of that being, such an essence is, for the inference is correct: it is a being ens in act; therefore it is. For to be a being ens in act does not reduce the character of being ens which includes the verb is. So, even if we grant that this actual essential being depends on a further limit or act, as on a necessary condition or something of this sort, still that very being will formally constitute a being ens in act and will distinguish the latter from a being ens in potency.
Thus, by virtue of that being a thing is truly and absolutely said to be, just as an accident by virtue of its being is said to be a being ens in act and to be absolutely, even though that being requires an inherence in a subject so that, without it, it could not exist naturally.
Wells - Milwaukee, Marquette University Press Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, D. So if its necessity or impossibility, which depends on external causes, were known to us, we would have been able to feign nothing concerning it. For as far as We are concerned, after I know that I exist, s I cannot feign either that I exist or that I do not exist; nor can I feign an elephant which passes through the eye of a needle; nor, after I know the nature of God, can I feign either that he exists or that he does not exist.
From this what I have said is evident: that the fiction of which we are speaking here does not occur concerning eternal truths.
So if we wished to conceive the existence of Adam, for example, through existence in general, it would be the same as if, to conceive his essence, we attended to the nature of being, so that in the end we defined him by saying that Adam is a being. Therefore, the more generally existence is conceived, the more confusedly also it is conceived, and the more easily it can be ascribed fictitiously to anything.
Conversely, the more particularly it is conceived, then the more clearly it is understood, and the more difficult it is for us, [even] when we do not attend to the order of Nature, to ascribe it fictitiously to anything other than the thing itself This is worth noting. We can feign this, I say, so long as we see no impossibility and no necessity. Therefore, when I say to someone that the earth is not round, etc. As I have said, I feign this so long as I see no impossibility and no necessity.
The same is true of its contradictory -- it need only be examined for its falsity to be clear. This will be plain immediately, when we speak of fictions concerning essence. Although many say that they doubt whether God exists, nevertheless they have nothing but the name, or they feign something which they call God; this does not agree with the nature of God, as I shall show later in the proper place. Thus it is a first and eternal truth that God is; but that Adam thinks is not an eternal truth.
That there is no Chimera is an eternal truth; but not that Adam does not think. If it were not for the immediately following phrase ipsa sua natura , I would think this almost certainly correct. It can be doubted very much whether existence is a perfection or degree of reality; for it can be doubted whether existence is one of those things that can be conceived -- that is, one of the parts of essence; or whether it is only a certain imaginary concept, such as that of heat and cold, which is a denomination only of our perception, not of the nature of things.
Yet if we consider more accurately, [we shall see] that we conceive something more when we think that a thing A exists, than when we think that it is possible. Therefore it seems to be true that existence is a certain degree of reality; or certainly that it is some relation to degrees of reality. Existence is not a degree of reality, however; for of every degree of reality it is possible to understand the existence as well as the possibility.
Existence will therefore be the superiority of the degrees of reality of one thing over the degrees of reality of an opposed thing. That is, that which is more perfect than all things mutually incompatibles exists, and conversely what exists is more perfect than the non-existent, but it is not true that existence itself is a perfection, since it is only a certain comparative relation [comparatio] of perfections among themselves.
From: Robert Merrihew Adams - Leibniz. During the period between the death of Leibniz and the publication of Kant's critical writings s , Wolff was perhaps the most influential philosopher in Germany. Wolff thought of philosophy as that discipline which provides reasons to explain why things exist or occur and why they are even possible.
Thus, he included within philosophy a much broader range of subjects than might now be recognized as 'philosophical'. Indeed for Wolff all human knowledge consists of only three disciplines: history, mathematics and philosophy.
For Wolff, the immediate objective of philosophical method is to achieve certitude by establishing an order of truths within each discipline and a system within human knowledge as a whole. The ultimate goal is to establish a reliable foundation for the conduct of human affairs and the enlargement of knowledge. From: Charles A. Corr - Wolff, Christian - - in: Edward Craig ed. The former requires that what is must be free from inner conflict, the latter that, if it does not, like a necessary being, have a reason for being in its own nature, it must depend on such a reason in something other than itself.
From these principles Wolff proceeds to the consideration of the metaphysical modalities, of which the most fundamental is the possible, the negation of the self-contradictory, or logically impossible. Everything actual, he holds, is by the law of contradiction possible, but he here embraces some invalid theorems, for instance, that a possible consequence can only have possible premisses.
There is no room in Wolffianism, any more than in Leibnizianism, for radical alternativity: Kant, however, will diverge from this position under the influence of Crusius.
All this leads, however, to Wolff's treatment of what he calls an entity: an entity is defined as any thing which can exist, to which existence is not repugnant. Thus warmth in this stone is a something, an entity, since a stone certainly can be warm or a warm stone can exist.
There does not need to be any actual stone-warmth for us to have an entity before us. An entity is, however, rightly called fictitious or imaginary, if it lacks existence, which does not, however, make it less of an entity. These near-Meinongian positions are of great contemporary interest, and form the spring-board for much of Kant's later criticisms of the ontological proof, which is Wolffian enough to treat possible dollars as if they certainly were something.
Wolff goes on to draw the distinctions of essential features and attributes, on the one hand, which always must belong to an entity, and its modes, on the other hand, which are merely the characters that it can have and also can not have.
From: John N. Findlay - Kant and the transcendental object. A hermeneutic study - Oxford, Clarendon Press, Though sometimes wrongly characterized for example by Hegel as a Wolffian, he was instead an important critic of that position.
His system reflected a new alliance between Pietism and Lutheran orthodoxy, offering a comprehensive antirationalist, realist, and voluntarist alternative to the neoscholastic tradition as renovated by Leibniz.
Crusius was important in Kant's development and helps us understand the latter's philosophical Protestantism. From: Michael J. Recent historical scholarship has stressed Crusius' importance in Kant's development, and the view that Kant's philosophy was rooted in Wolff's system has been more and more questioned. He therefore appealed both to recent anti-Wolffian trends -- to Maupertuis and his Berlin circle and through Maupertuis to Newton -- and to Crusius, the new leader of Pietist philosophy and only nine years his senior, whose reputation grew tremendously from on.
Crusius' influence on Kant consists in six main points, some of which were also held by other Pietist philosophers or by Maupertuis. Crusius stressed the limits of human understanding, a theme that recurs in Kant's writings under different forms from on. He rejected the Ontological Argument, as did Kant after , and he later rejected all theoretical proofs of God's existence. He assumed a multiplicity of independent first principles; Kant did so after He denied the importance of formal logic, and simplified it.
He rejected the possibility of defining existence, and accepted a multiplicity of simple notions.
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